Entrepreneurship is tough. Competition is fierce, and you need to take every advantage you can if you’re going to keep your venture alive.
Instagram is just one tool which entrepreneurs are using to stay ahead of the competition. It now boasts of 500 million daily active users, and about 800 million total users. When done correctly, those likes and shares can lead to more sales.
So how is Instagram shaping entrepreneurship?
How Instagram Stands Out from the Rest
Instagram is the second most popular social network. There are a few reasons for this, but the main ones are:
- Heavy visuals.
- Short content that gets right to the point.
- It has the ‘cool’ factor.
These traits make it popular among difficult demographics, such as young people that have been turned off by Facebook. It also doesn’t come with the same potentially toxic atmosphere that Twitter often suffers from.
So how has that shaped entrepreneurship?
Reaching a Huge New Audience
The big benefit of Instagram is that you can reach an entirely new audience you could never hope to reach ten years ago.
And this is not just to do with numbers. It’s the fact that you can reach audiences in other markets. An artist from New York can exhibit their work from Norway to Australia.
That sort of reach brings up a far greater number of opportunities for doing business.
But How Does This Translate to Sales?
It’s true that many businesses have failed to see the selling benefits of using Instagram.
You can use Instagram to sell directly, but this is not its primary purpose. The main method of selling on Instagram is the indirect method of superior branding.
The fact is 70% of all hashtags on Instagram are now branded, which leads to a 12% increase in engagement. Branding improves business-customer relationships, which naturally leads to more sales.
How Can Entrepreneurs Make More Sales from Instagram?
It goes back to the question of how entrepreneurs can hope to make more sales from Instagram. There are lots of ways to do this, including using external services to get the pictures commented by real followers. This improves visibility and gradually makes your brand more appealing.
Entrepreneurs on Instagram shouldn’t be as direct as the average sales pitch. That’s a difficult concept for entrepreneurs to get their heads around.
Clever product placement and using Instagram Stories can help to gently push your clients in a certain direction.
Instagram is about instant gratification and your post may only get a few seconds of time to make an impression. You must be subtler about the way you sell.
It’s forcing entrepreneurs to get smarter about how they promote themselves.
Last Word – More Than Instagram
Don’t assume that Instagram is now the only place you need to promote yourself.
Successful brands use multiple social media networks with unique content to build their brand. That’s why you must have a solid, documented social media strategy to make the most of Instagram.
Are you building your Instagram presence yet?
great article keep posting man, really appreciated